Hatch has tough words for Obama, Geithner on fiscal cliff

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Hatch has tough words for Obama, Geithner on fiscal cliff

SALT LAKE CITY – Utah Senator Orrin Hatch spoke on behalf of the Republican Party this weekend, delivering their national weekly address.

Hatch then spoke with FOX 13 about what he calls the president’s ‘unserious’ proposal for facing the upcoming fiscal cliff.

“What the president needs is to find a book called, ‘Tax Reform for Dummies,’ and the president’s no dummy. He’s a smart guy,” Hatch said.

Hatch said the president’s proposal to raise taxes on income over $250,000 while cutting between $300 and 400 billion from Medicare spending is unserious. He also had tough words for Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.

“If I had been Secretary of the Treasury, and the president said you gotta go up to the serious people in Congress and you gotta present this to them, I would have said, ‘Mr. President I won’t do that, because I don’t think it’s a serious program and if you force me to do it I will resign.’ That’s what I would have said,” Hatch said.

“What we did is put forward a very comprehensive, very carefully designed mix of savings and tax rates to help us put us back on a path to stabilizing our debt, fixing our debt and living within our means.”